The Cisco® ASR 9000 Series Route Switch Processor 440 (RSP 440) is a main system processor for Cisco ASR 9000 Series. It supports scalable, low-power, next-generation platforms, as well as required by today’s service provider networks.

In addition to a higher capacity and scale, the Cisco ASR 9000 Series offers:

- Distributed forwarding and control planes for higher performance- Network virtualization technology to provide excellent resilience and capacity expansion- Modularized system components in both hardware and software, isolating failure and faults to subsystems and components- Hardware-based signaling for the fabric, providing industry-leading resilience with zero packet loss on switchover- Built-in redundancy in hardware components such as the route switch processor (RSP), switch fabric, control-plane chassis control bus, and power supplies, thereby avoiding a single point of failure- Advanced network timing technologies support for precise frequency and time distribution throughout the network- Extensive selection of time-division multiplexing (TDM) and Ethernet interfaces for flexible deployment in multiservice edge (MSE) and RAN aggregation environments with packet- and circuit-based transport

The Cisco ASR 9000 Series operates in a fully distributed fashion, meaning that all packet-forwarding decisions and actions take place on each individual line card. Cisco ASR 9000 Series line cards provide a flexible programming infrastructure with high-density hierarchical quality-of-service (H-QoS) services, security, and integrated Synchronous Ethernet (SyncE). The distributed nature of the Cisco ASR 9000 Series also presents itself in the control plane. The distributed control plane facilitates scale in features such as Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) and Ethernet operations, administration, and management (EOAM), which improve resilience and provide comprehensive instrumentation.

Cisco ASR 9000 Series routers bring the time-tested and robust carrier-class capabilities of Cisco IOS® XR Software to the Carrier Ethernet edge. The operating system supports true software process modularity. The capabilities of Cisco IOS XR Software allow each process to run in separate protected memory, including each routing protocol along with multiple instances of control, data, and management planes supported. The software also supports distributed route processing.